April 4, 2013

Mindfulness
meditation, commonly associated with Zen Buddhism,
has become popular in the past few years as a technique for dealing with
depression, and managing stress and chronic pain. Evidence shows that
mindfulness meditation can help reduce the chance of problems such as
depression returning, and adds another weapon into your armory against
emotional problems.

Being
present in the moment

Mindfulness
is the art of being present in the moment, without passing judgement about your
experience. The mindfulness process is so simple – and yet so challenging. Keep
your attention focused on the moment that you’re experiencing right
now. Suspend your judgement about what you’re feeling, thinking, and
absorbing through your senses. Simply observe what’s going on around you, in
your mind, and in your body without doing anything. Just allow yourself to be
aware of what’s happening.

Mindfulness
literature talks about the way your mind almost mechanically forms judgments about each of your experiences, labeling them as good, bad, or neutral
depending on how you value them. Things that generate good and bad feelings
within you get most of your attention, but you may ignore neutral things or
deem them to be boring. Mindfulness meditation encourages awareness of the present
moment with an uncultured mind, observing even the seemingly mundane without
judgement. The whole experience is a bit like looking at the world for the
first time. When
you meet someone you know, try to see her through fresh eyes.

Suspend
your prior knowledge, thoughts, experiences, and opinions about a specific
person. You can try this with acquaintances or people you know very well, such as
family members and close friends. Try mindfulness exercises when you’re in the
countryside or walking down the street. Whether the surroundings are familiar
to you or not, try to see the details of the world around you through fresh
eyes.

Becoming
adept at redirecting your attention away from yourself (this includes your
bodily sensations, thoughts, and mental images), in certain situations, is the
essence of task concentration.
Rather than thinking about yourself, you focus your attention towards your
external environment and what you’re doing.

Task
concentration involves paying less attention to what’s going on inside
of you and more attention to what’s happening outside
of you. Task concentration can be particularly useful in
situations that trigger anxiety. Task concentration can help you to
counterbalance your tendency to focus on threats and on yourself when you feel
anxious.

As
you begin to practice task concentration, break down the process into two rehearsal
arenas – just as when learning to drive you begin on quiet roads and eventually
advance on to busier roads. The two rehearsal arenas are as follows:

Non-threatening
situations: Here, you typically experience little or
no anxiety. For example, if you have social phobia, you may feel little anxiety
walking through a park, travelling on a very quiet train, or socializing with
family members and close friends.

More challenging
situations: Here, you tend to experience moderate to severe
anxiety. More challenging situations may include shopping in a busy grocery
store, travelling on a train during rush hour, or attending a party with many
guests whom you do not know.

Typically,
you gradually progress from moderately threatening situations to more challenging
situations as you practise and develop greater skill. First, practice
redirecting your attention in situations you regard as relatively non-threatening,
then you can move on to using the techniques in increasingly challenging
situations.

The
proof of the pudding is in the eating. The same can be said of your assumptions, behaviors beliefs, and predictions about yourself and the world around you.
Use experiments to test out the truth about
your beliefs and to assess the usefulness of
your behaviors.

You
can use behavioral experiments in the following ways:

·To test the validity of a thought or
belief that you hold about yourself, other people, or the world.

·To test the validity of an alternative
thought or belief.

·To discover the effects that mental or
behavioural activities have on your difficulties.

·To gather evidence in order to clarify
the nature of your problem.

Living
according to a set of beliefs because you think they’re true and helpful is both
easy and common. You can also easily stick to familiar ways of behaving because
you think that they keep you safe from feared
events, or that they help you to achieve certain goals. An example of this may
be holding a belief that other people are out to find fault with you – with
this thought in mind, you then work hard to hide your mistakes and
shortcomings.

The
beauty of a behavioral experiment is that you often find that your worst imagined
scenarios don’t happen, or that you deal with such situations effectively when,
or even if, they do occur.

We
may be stating the obvious, but change can be less daunting if you keep in mind
that you can always return to your old ways of thinking about things if the new
ways don’t seem any better. If your old ways seem to be the best option,
nothing’s stopping you from going back to them. The trick is to prepare yourself
to try out new strategies and to give them a chance before returning to your
former ways. Find out what works best for you and your particular situation.

Long the material for jokes, snoring is generally accepted as common
and annoying in adults but as nothing to worry about. However, snoring is no
laughing matter. Frequent, loud snoring is often a sign of sleep apnea and may
increase your risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as well
as lead to daytime sleepiness and impaired performance.

Snoring is caused by a narrowing or partial blockage of your
airways at the back of the mouth and upper throat. This obstruction results in
increased air turbulence when breathing in, causing the soft tissues in your
throat to vibrate. The end result is a noisy snore that can disrupt the sleep
of your bed partner. This narrowing of the airways is typically caused by the
soft palate, tongue, and throat relaxing while you sleep, but allergies or
sinus problems can also contribute to a narrowing of the airways, as can being
overweight and having extra soft tissue around your upper airways.

The larger the tissues in your soft palate, the more likely you
are to snore while sleeping. Alcohol or sedatives taken shortly before sleep also
promote snoring. These drugs cause greater relaxation of the tissues in your
throat and mouth. Surveys reveal that about one-half of all adults snore, and
50 percent of these adults do so loudly and frequently. African Americans,
Asians, and Hispanics are more likely to snore loudly and frequently compared
to Caucasians, and snoring

problems increase with age.

Not everyone who snores has sleep apnea, but people who have sleep
apnea typically do snore loudly and frequently. Sleep apnea is a serious sleep
disorder, and its hallmark is loud, frequent snoring linked to intermittent
brief pauses in breathing while sleeping. Even if you don’t experience these breathing
pauses, snoring can still be a problem for you as well as for your bed partner.
The increased breathing effort associated with snoring can impair your sleep
quality and lead to many of the same health consequences as sleep apnea.

One study found that older adults who did not have sleep apnea, but
who snored 6–7 nights a week, were more than twice as likely to report being
excessively sleepy during the day than those who never snored. The more people
snored, the more daytime fatigue they reported. That sleepiness may help
explain why snorers are more likely to be in car crashes than people who do not
snore. Loud snoring can also disrupt the sleep of bed partners and strain marital
relations, especially if snoring causes the spouses to sleep in separate
bedrooms.

Snoring also increases the risk of developing diabetes and heart
disease. One study found that women who snored regularly were twice as likely
as those who did not snore to develop diabetes, even if they were not
overweight—another risk factor for diabetes. Other studies suggest persistent
snoring may raise the lifetime risk of developing high blood pressure, heart
failure, and stroke.

About one-third of all pregnant women begin snoring for the
first time during their second trimester. If you are snoring while pregnant, let
your doctor know. Snoring in pregnancy can be associated with high blood
pressure and can have a negative effect on your baby’s growth and development.
Your doctor will routinely keep a close eye on your blood pressure throughout
your pregnancy and can let you know if any additional evaluations for the
snoring might be useful. In most cases, the snoring and any related high blood
pressure will subside shortly after delivery.

Snoring can also be a problem in children. As many as 10–15 percent
of young children, who typically have enlarged adenoids and tonsils, snore on a
regular basis. Several studies show that children who snore (with or without
sleep apnea) are more likely than those who do not snore to score lower on
tests that measure intelligence, memory, and ability to maintain attention.
These children also have more problematic behavior, including hyperactivity.
The end result is that children who snore do not perform in school as well as
those who do not snore. Strikingly, snoring was linked to a greater drop in IQ
than that seen in children who had elevated levels of lead in their blood.
Although the behavior of children improves after they stop snoring, studies
suggest they may continue to get poorer grades in school, perhaps because of
lasting effects on the brain linked to the snoring. You should have your child
evaluated by your doctor if the child snores loudly and frequently—three to
four times a week— especially if brief pauses in breathing while asleep are
noted and if there are signs of hyperactivity or daytime sleepiness, inadequate
school achievement, or slower than expected development.

Surgery to remove the adenoids and tonsils of children often can
cure their snoring and any associated sleep apnea. Such surgery has been linked
to a reduction in hyperactivity and improved ability to pay attention, even in
children who showed no signs of sleep apnea before surgery.

Snoring in older children and adults may be relieved by less
invasive measures, however. These measures include losing weight, refraining from
tobacco, sleeping on the side rather than on the back, or elevating the head
while sleeping. Treating chronic congestion and refraining from alcohol or
sedatives before sleeping can also stop snoring. In some adults, snoring can be
relieved by dental appliances that re-position the soft tissues in the mouth.
Although numerous over-the-counter nasal strips and sprays claim to relieve
snoring, no scientific evidence supports those claims.

Yes, but it gets
harder the fewer foods you allow. To stay healthy you need carbohydrates, fats
and proteins -and not just any proteins, but a mix containing all 22 amino
acids from which your own proteins are built. You need trace elements, vitamins
and minerals as well. Avocados reputedly include all these, but not in the
right proportions, so you'd need to choose additional foods carefully.

What's the evidence
linking sugar to cancer risk?

There's long been
anecdotal evidence linking higher sugar consumption with an increased risk of
cancer. Doctors working in Africa during the 20th century noted how increasing
consumption of refined carbohydrates and sugar by the indigenous populations
led to increased risk of what they termed the 'diseases of civilisation', such
as diabetes, heart disease and some forms of cancer. More scientific evidence
has emerged from studies involving comparisons of the blood glucose levels of
huge numbers of people and their cancer risk.

In 2005, a study of
1.3 million Korean people pointed to a link between sugar consumption and
cancer risk, as did a European study published in 2010. However, the evidence
is still far from compelling, as the increased risk figures are small and
possibly attributable to other lifestyle factors.

Why
does your tummy rumble when you're hungry?

The
technical term is 'borborygmus' and it's the sound of your stomach and intestines contracting. This occurs continuously,
as part of the normal digestive process: your stomach squeezes to mix your food
with the gastric juices; your intestines contract to move food along on its
journey. When your stomach is empty, the borborygmus is louder because you're squeezing
air back and forth and the empty space resonates. B But there's also a wave of
contractions called the 'migrating myoelectric complex', which runs from the
stomach to the small intestine, between an hour and 90 minutes after eating.
This is designed to help sweep out any leftover indigestible bones, seeds and
toenails, and also to keep the intestinal bacteria down in the lower intestine,
where they belong.

April 1, 2013

The
money market is a market in which the cash requirements of market participants
who are long cash are met along with the requirements of those that are short
cash. This is identical to any financial market; the distinguishing factor of
the money market is that it provides for only short-term cash requirements. The
market will always, without fail, be required because the needs of long cash
and short cash market participants are never completely synchronized. The
participants in the market are many and varied, and large numbers of them are
both borrowers and
lenders at the same time. They include:

■ the
sovereign authority, including the central government (“Treasury”), as well as government agencies and
the central bank or reserve bank;

■
individual private investors, such as high net-worth individuals and small savers;

■
intermediaries such as money brokers, banking institutions, etc.;

■
infrastructure of the marketplace, such as derivatives exchanges.

A
money market exists in virtually every country in the world, and all such
markets exhibit the characteristics we describe in this book to some extent.
For instance, they provide a means by which the conflicting needs of borrowers
and lenders can achieve equilibrium, they act as a conduit for financing of all
maturities between one day and one year, and they can be accessed by
individuals, corporations, and governments alike.

In
addition to national domestic markets, there is the international cross-border
market illustrated by the trade in Eurocurrencies. Of course, there are
distinctions between individual country markets, and financial market culture
will differ. For instance, the prevailing financial culture in the United
States and United Kingdom is based on a secondary market in tradable financial
assets, so we have a developed and liquid bond and equity market in these
economies. While such an arrangement also exists in virtually all other
countries, the culture in certain economies such as Japan and (to a lesser
extent) Germany is based more on banking relationships, with banks providing a
large proportion of corporate finance. The differences across countries are not
touched; rather, it is the similarities in the type of instruments used that is
highlighted.

After
you decide you’re going to start your own home-based business, you have to
answer two questions: Exactly what kind of home-based business do you want to
start, and what’s the best way to market your products or services? You
basically have two types of home-based businesses to choose from: businesses
you start from scratch and businesses you buy. The latter category is further
split into three types: franchises, direct-selling opportunities, and business
opportunities. Whether you prefer to march to your own drummer and start your
business from the ground up or get a business-in-a-box depends on your personal
preferences.

The
advantage of a business you start from scratch is that you can mold it to fit
your preferences and the existing and emerging markets, which provides you with
a boundless variety of possibilities. Businesses started from scratch account
for the majority of viable, full-time businesses — in other words, they tend to
be more successful over the long run than businesses you can buy. In their book
Finding Your Perfect Work (Tarcher), Paul and Sarah provide characteristics of
more than 1,500 self-employment careers, along with hundreds of examples of
unique businesses that people have carved out for themselves.

If
you have a business idea that doesn’t fit an existing category, you can get feedback
on your business concept at www.conceptfeedback.com. Each type of home business that
you can buy, on the other hand, has its own spin. The following illustrates how
the three types are different from one another.

Franchise

A
franchise is an agreement in which one business grants another business the
right to distribute its products or services. Some common home-based franchises
include the following:

·Aussie
Pet Mobile (mobile pet grooming)

·Jani-King
(commercial cleaning service)

·Jazzercise
(dance/exercise classes)

·ServiceMaster
Clean (cleaning service)

·Snap-On
Tools (professional tools and equipment)

Direct
selling

Direct
selling involves selling consumer products or services in a person-to-person
manner, away from a fixed retail location. The two main types of direct-selling
opportunities are:

1.Single-level
marketing: Making money by buying products from a parent company and then
selling those products directly to customers

2.Multi-level
marketing: Making money through single-level marketing and by sponsoring new
direct sellers

Some
common home-based direct-selling opportunities include the following:

·Shaklee
(household cleaning products)

·The
Pampered Chef (kitchen tools)

·Green
Irene (green products and consulting)

·Longaberger
Company (baskets)

·Mary
Kay, Inc. (cosmetics)

·Fuller
Brush Company (household and personal-care products)

Business
opportunity

A
business opportunity is an idea, product, system, or service that someone develops
and offers to sell to others to help them start their own, similar businesses.
With a business opportunity, your customers and clients pay you directly when you
deliver a product or service to them. (Another way to think of a business
opportunity is that it’s any business concept you can buy from someone else
that isn’t direct selling or franchising.) Here are several examples of
business opportunities that you can easily run out of your home:

·Astro
Events of America (inflatable party rentals)

·Debt
Zero LLC (debt settlement)

·ClosetMaid
(storage and organizational products)

·Vendstar
(bulk-candy vending machines)

Interested
in how to find more companies and how to get in touch with them? Entrepreneur
Media - www.entrepreneur.com and www.gosmallbiz.com have extensive information on
business opportunities you can buy. You can also do a search on Google, using
the keywords business opportunity.

After
you decide on a business, you have to find the money to get it started. Then
you have to market your products or services and persuade people to buy them.
You can choose conventional methods of promotion, such as advertising and
public relations, or you can leverage new selling opportunities, such as the
Internet, to your advantage. Or you can (and probably should) do both.

A
determination of what works, and what does not, cannot be made in the realm of
commodities trading without quality data for use in tests and simulations. Several
types of data may be needed by the trader interested in developing a profitable
commodities trading system. At the very least, the trader will require
historical pricing data for the commodities of interest.

TYPES
OF DATA

Commodities
pricing data is available for individual or continuous contracts. Individual
contract data consists of quotations for individual commodities contracts. At
any given time, there may be several contracts actively trading. Most speculators
trade the front-month contracts, those that are most liquid and closest to
expiration, but are not yet past first notice date. As each contract nears
expiration, or passes first notice date, the trader “rolls over” any open
position into the next contract. Working with individual contracts, therefore,
can add a great deal of complexity to simulations and tests. Not only must
trades directly generated by the trading system be dealt with, but the system
developer must also correctly handle rollovers and the selection of appropriate
contracts.

To
make system testing easier and more practical, the continuous contract was invented. A continuous contract consists of
appropriate individual contracts strung together, end to end, to form a single,
continuous data series. Some data massaging usually takes place when putting
together a continuous contract; the purpose is to close the gaps that occur at
rollover, when one contract ends and another begins, Simple back-adjustment appears to be the most
reasonable and popular gap-closing method. Back-adjustment involves nothing
more than the subtraction of constants, chosen to close the gaps, from all
contracts in a series other than the most recent. Since the only operation
performed on a contract’s prices is the subtraction of a constant, all linear
price relationships (e.g., price changes over time, volatility levels, and
ranges) are preserved. Account simulations performed using back-adjusted
continuous contracts yield results that need correction only for rollover
costs. Once corrected for rollover, simulated trades will produce profits and losses
identical to those derived from simulations performed using individual
contracts. However, if trading decisions depend upon information involving
absolute levels, percentages, or ratios of prices, then additional data series
(beyond backadjusted continuous contracts) will be required before tests can be
conducted.

End-of-day pricing data, whether in the form of individual
or continuous contracts, consists of a series of daily quotations. Each
quotation, “bar,” or data point typically contains seven fields of information:
date, open, high, low, close, volume, and open interest. Volume and open
interest are normally unavailable until after the close of the following day;
when testing trading methods, use only past values of these two variables or
the outcome may be a fabulous, but essentially untradable, system! The open,
high, low, and close (sometimes referred to as the settlement price) are
available each day shortly after the market closes.

Intraday
pricing data consists either of a series of fixed-interval bars or of individual
ticks. The data fields for fixed-interval bars are date, time, open, high, low,
close, and tick volume. Tick volume differs from the volume reported for end of-day
data series: For intraday data, it is the number of ticks that occur in the
period making up the bar, regardless of the number of contracts involved in the
transactions reflected in those ticks. Only date, time, and price information
are reported for individual ticks: volume is not. Intraday tick data is easily
converted into data with fixed-interval bars using readily available software.
Conversion software is frequently provided by the data vendor at no extra cost
to the consumer.

In
addition to commodities pricing data, other kinds of data may be of value. Temperature
and rainfall data have a bearing on agricultural markets. Various economic time
series that cover every aspect of the economy, from inflation to housing
starts, may improve the odds of trading commodities successfully. Do not forget
to examine reports and measures that reflect sentiment, such as the Commitment
of Traders (COT) releases, bullish and bearish consensus surveys, and put-call
ratios. Non-quantitative forms of sentiment data, such as news headlines,may
also be acquired and quantified for use in systematic tests. Nothing should be
ignored. Mining unusual data often uncovers interesting and profitable discoveries.
It is often the case that the more esoteric or arcane the data, and the more
difficult it is to obtain, the greater its value!

To
establish appropriate decision rules, managers must understand the economic
environment in which they operate. For example, a grocery retailer may offer
consumers a highly price-sensitive product, such as milk, at an extremely low
markup over cost—say, 1 percent to 2 percent—while offering less
price-sensitive products, such as nonprescription drugs, at markups of as high
as 40 percent over cost. Managerial economics describes the logic of this pricing
practice with respect to the goal of profit maximization. Similarly, managerial
economics reveals that auto import quotas reduce the availability of
substitutes for domestically produced cars, raise auto prices, and create the possibility
of monopoly profits for domestic manufacturers. It does not explain whether
imposing quotas is good public policy; that is a decision involving broader
political considerations.

Managerial
economics only describes the predictable economic consequences of such actions.
Managerial economics offers a comprehensive application of economic theory and
methodology to management decision making. It is as relevant to the management
of government agencies, cooperatives, schools, hospitals, museums, and similar
not-for-profit institutions as it is to the management of profit-oriented
businesses.